Planting Pineapples

You don't really know Uncle Fah Shin until you know how skilled he is in food cultivation.

Hello! This is Phui Yee.

Last week Uncle Fah Shin brought seven pineapple plants from his home to be added to the garden. These were originally "suckers" (shoots that grow from leaf axils of the pineapple stem) which were later grown in polybags.

The experienced gardener also brought dried palm leaves to create mulch and trap moisture for these babies. He said this palm is also the same one that makes the Chinese traditional hand fan... the ones your Ah Ma or Ah Kong used to have. (the fan that gave me a good night's sleep whenever electricity went off when I was young.)

Michael was clearly a big help around the garden that day. Over refreshments afterwards we were teasing him about something but Uncle Fah Shin quickly came to his aide. Allies form quickly at the garden, aye.

With all the pineapples in place, and our arms bearing zig-zagged scratches from the spiky leaves, we were super happy just looking at them.

Meanwhile, just a quick updates on a few other plants:

The okra plants are flourishing despite a few earlier ones were chomped off by hungry crickets. These plants are unbelievably huge (okay la I admit this is only my second time seeing an adult okra plant this close). A certain visitor came and asked us where did we transplant the okra plants from... Ahem, we grew them  from seeds right here in this garden! (Hehe, as you see, visitors make us tremendously happy so all you people who have not been to our farm of late please come!) 

 

Ling Beng said the spring onion are ready for harvesting. She planted these from three shallots a few weeks ago. I said we should sell them but she replied, "Spring onion are given free when people buy vegetables la." No way the Penangite in me's gonna allow that. NO. We SELL spring onion, yes. :)

The sweet potato leaves are also calling us to eat them... soon.

We'll soon have some pumpkin soup to go along with it too. Hello, babies!!

We are soon reaching the edge of the strip of land we initially plan to confine the garden to. I suppose we will be growing on a bigger patch in the coming weeks. We welcome everyone in FGT to join us! Bring your friends and family along lah. There's a children's patch that you can teach your kids how to care for plants and watch them grow too. :)

If you're not yet on our mailing list please leave us a comment below and we'll let you know our next gardening date and time.

See ya at the garden!